Hi all,

Welcome to the 2024-25 hockey season! This is just a quick note to share a few details about upcoming evaluations. I apologize for the lengthy message.

For those who don’t know me, my name is Trish Sadoway, I am currently the VP Senior Director and overseeing the U15 Division as the incoming director has stepped down. I have been involved at many levels of SPMHA hockey – coaching, reffing, various team roles and this is my first season as VP Sr and spent four seasons as the U15 division director. I have three kids who play SPMHA hockey – two in U18 and one U21. I am a fair and equitable person and believe that the evaluation process will place your players on teams of an appropriate level to their skillset where they can be both developed and challenged within the framework of the teams that we will be able to form. I will communicate to the membership through the SPMHA U15 website and pledge to get this as right as I can.

If your player is new to U15 – you will notice a few differences from the junior divisions. The first is that there are two streams – Tiers 1, 2, 3 Contact and Tiers 1, 2, 3 Non-Contact. The number of contact spots for players this season will depend on registration and team placement, which means all players interested in a contact spot may or may not have the opportunity to play on a contact team. In 2023-2024 we had 5 Contact teams and 4 Non-Contact teams.

Secondly, unlike younger divisions where there is an upward push during evaluations – in U15, players can be moved up and down and from contact to non-contact and back (or vise versa) during the process. We are not trying to confuse or disappoint players – but this movement is often needed for comprehensive evaluation scores. U15 evaluations are based on game play only. There is no evaluated skills session.

Lastly, U15 cannot form teams until the majority of players are released from the AAA/AA stream, so there is a delay on when we start and finish evaluations, this can also affect player movement once we get started. Players who are released from the elite stream are evaluated based on SPMHA evaluations criteria and not the fact that they were in tryouts for the elite stream.

To avoid having too many different places to get information for the upcoming evaluations, almost all communication will be through the SPMHA website U15 division page https://www.spmha.ab.ca/. Once evaluations are underway, it will be important for everyone to watch the website for evaluation game updates and which players will play on which dates as the player groupings will change throughout the process and not all players play every evaluation day. Players will play a minimum of 3 games, some players may play more.

Please note that the pre-evaluation games are scheduled to run September 4-8. These are non-contact games to give your players an opportunity to have a little fun and dust off their skates before evaluations. Goaltender evaluations are September 11th, the fist evaluation game is September 13th and they will run until the 25th.

The evaluation format is:

  • Day 1 – September 13 – evaluation game (1 game/groups)
  • Day 2 – September 14 – new group/times posted on website (goal to be posted by 10:00 pm)
  • Day 3 – September 15 – evaluation games (4 games/groups)
  • Day 4 – September 16 – new groups/times posted on website (goal to be posted by 10:00pm)
  • Continuing on until evaluations are over

U15 players are evaluated on their choice of contact or non-contact and position. Players start in groups based on this information and the team they played on in the previous season. Should your player’s registration be missing information – I will contact you directly. Please respond so we can ensure that your player is evaluated accordingly.

We are still looking for volunteer evaluators for this season – if you are able to help please complete this form. 

I will be publishing further information over the coming weeks including evaluation groups and requests for volunteers (again please note that it is important to follow the website and refer back during evaluations). The SPMHA website includes information on the evaluation policies and procedures if you are looking for more information.

If you should “hear anything through the grapevine” regarding the U15 Division that you’d like clarification on and can’t find on the SPMHA website or FAQs, please don’t hesitate to email (u15.director@spmha.ab.ca) and ask – my goal is to try to respond to these inquiries within 24 hours to have accurate information out there being propagated rather than misinformation.

Have a great season,

Trish Sadoway

SPMHA VP Senior

Posted in U15 Posts

Leave a Comment